The beat of a heart
by nightofthelivingwhatsoever
Summary: Yusuke gets a tape that was recorded durning his accident before the police or ambulances got there. No one had told him someone tried to help him. rated T for accident description
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: Do not own anything that isn't mine.

Set a little while after Yusuke dies, about a year after, before they go to the Dark Tournament.

The police had been clearing out the storage spaces when they stumbled upon Yusuke's evidence box; since it was a closed case and all they called up his mother and asked her if she would like the things that they had retrieved while they had looked into her son's death. Atsuko Urameshi came down the next day and gathered what was left of the accident; things in Yusuke's pockets, report papers, and a video tape. They had told her that a civilian took the video before the police or ambulances had gotten to the scene, they told her that her son would probably want to see what was on it; so when she got home she tossed it to him and demanded that he watch it.

Yusuke walked slowly to Kurama's house after coming from Kuwabara's (who wasn't there); his mom had told him to watch the tape, but with their VCR laying in pieces (what could he say, he had anger problems) he had to go elsewhere and since Kuwabara wasn't home, Kurama was his next option. He bound up to the door and pounded on it for a good few minutes before the red head answered.

"Hey, you got a VCR?" Yusuke wasn't one for beating around the bush.

"Certainly, I assume you need to use it. What's on the tape?" Kurama allowed his friend to enter and showed him into the living room, where the VCR was located.

"Some footage this guy shot of my accident on his camera before the police and everyone took me away. The police burned it onto this tape and had it in storage with some other junk on me; they found the box and gave it to mom, who told me to watch it." Yusuke popped the tape in and settled on the couch.

"Mind if I watch with you?" Kurama received an indifferent shrug.

The video started out grainy and you couldn't see anything until the video taker moved past all the people in the way. Lying, sprawled, on the pavement was a bloody Yusuke; glass covering the ground and most of his body. His neck was twisted in a painful direction; gurgling noises softly sounded from his mouth. The little boy he had pushed away was sobbing in the arms of his mother, people were shouting for someone to call an ambulance, for the police, for someone to help him. There were people running for help and people just standing there; staring down at him.

"Hey! Let me through! Come on people, move!" A girl in a grey school uniform tried to push past the people. She broke through the gathering, but someone held onto her arm; telling her that the paramedics were on their way and she shouldn't touch him.

The girl whipped her head back at the stranger and glaring at them said; "Do you see how the boy's head is twisted like that? If you don't turn his head, he'll choke on his own blood and die before the medic's can even get through mid town traffic, So you can either let me go, or I'll break your arm; your choice." The gaping mouthed by-stander immediately released her and allowed her to rush to Yusuke's side.

"Dude, she can't be even a year older than I was." Yusuke remarked watching the girl brace his neck with her hands and slightly turn his head so that his nose wasn't touching the back of his left shoulder.

"I'd say two or three; her uniform is from an all girl's high school in the next city. My school competes with them sometimes." Kurama noticed a scar behind Yusuke's left ear that disappeared into his hairline, now he knew where it had come from.

The two watched as the girl bent down to Yusuke's chest, to try and detect a pulse. She then leaned close to Yusuke's head; "Can you hear me, kid? It's gonna be all right, okay, just hold on! My name's Rae, just keep breathing, kid." Yusuke's breaths were ragged and barely there at all. His chest quivered when it tried to rise; and then, suddenly, it stopped all together.

"Oh, not today, kid. You're not gonna die, I won't let you die!" Rae gently tilted his head back to open his airways and continued to give him CPR until ambulance sirens were heard in the distance. Her arms were caked in blood up to her forearms, there was glass cutting her bare legs, but she didn't look a bit phased. In fact, she looked angry when the paramedic pushed her away and they brought out the portable defibrillator. One shouted "Clear!" and gave him 10,000 volts to the heart; three times.

"There's nothing; he's a goner. There's nothing we can do." The two men loaded Yusuke's body into the ambulance and covered him with a white sheet. The police officers directed the people away, but the camera guy still stood amongst the few; still focusing on Rae; who had desperately tried to save Yusuke. She sat on the edge of the sidewalk, head in her hands, just shaking her head. She had felt the life drain from the teenager and there was nothing she could do about it.

There was blood all over her, but she didn't seem to care as she left a streak of the life sustaining liquid on her forehead as she brushed back a coal colored hair. One of the police officers asked her to accompany him to the hospital, so they doctors could get the glass out of her skin and clean her up. She just gave a nod and got into the police car. The last few seconds of the tape was just a close up of her; it seemed like she was looking directly at the camera, although it was unlikely. That thin, blood smeared school girl that Yusuke would think about in the days after; her pure blue eyes, her ashen skin, full red lips and the expression one only gets when they had actually felt death, her defeated gait of a walk; something about it screamed sadness. It just perplexed the two boys watching the tape how someone who was only in the presence of a dying person for no more than twenty minutes could be so grief stricken by the loss of that person.

The camera was shut off as the last police car drove away, leaving nothing left to see. "Nobody told me," Yusuke started to say, but stopped himself.

"It's common that things like this often get lost in communication. Don't feel so bad, I'm sure she went on and graduated and did fine for herself. Most students at her school do." Kurama tried to comfort his friend, even he felt sorry for the girl that had to feel Yusuke die under her hands.

"She was at my wake. I remember her, now, she sat in the back the whole time." Yusuke popped the tape out of the VCR, running a hand through his hair.

"It must've been hard for her, seeing all those people who knew you personally and she didn't even know your name." Kurama walked over to the computer in the small office area built into the living room, and searched for Rae on her school's website. "She graduated this year, but moved abroad. She was top of her class, valedictorian, top ten percent, honor roll; seems like a very smart girl."

"And a good samaritan to boot," Yusuke sighed deeply, "I feel like I let her down, and now she's not even around so that I can apologize for dying on her, I probably scarred her for life."

"Yusuke, it's not really your fault you died. People get in accidents all the time and good samaritans try to help them, but they end up dead. She's probably about as traumatized as you were." Kurama tried to lift Yusuke's mood, but it seemed to no use.

"I just wish I could repay her somehow, like a thanks or something," Yusuke's eye shot open at the idea that popped into his head, "You got a pencil and paper?" Yusuke received both items and spent about an hour bent over the paper, drawing. When Kurama tried to find out what it was he was doing, all Yusuke would say was "You'll see." After he finished Yusuke immediately folded the paper and shoved it in his pocket. Kurama never found out what was on that paper until the very day Yusuke turned 18. By that time pretty much everyone had seen the video of Rae.

On that day, Yusuke bound up to the three of them; Hiei, Kuwabara and Kurama, grinning ear to ear and pulled up his shirt to show them all. Covering the majority of his left shoulder was a huge bleeding heart that looked like it had been made of glass. In the small details of the intricate tattoo, right in the middle was the name RAE in cursive. It was really a piece of artwork, it was the drawing Yusuke had made when he first seen the video.

"The guy that did it said the swelling would go down." Yusuke gestured to the swollen red area all around his new body art.

"I assume Keiko didn't mind you having another girl's name permanently drawn onto your skin?" Kurama marveled at the work, while Kuwabara was trying to smack it; yelling something about smacking the first tattoo.

"No, she understands that it's a gesture toward a complete stranger that tried to save my life." Yusuke pushed back his childhood rival. You had to be really close to notice, but the little detail that gave the heart its glass look and heart shape wasn't just random jagged marks; it was a pattern they had seen before.

A heart beat you would see on a heart moniter.


	2. Rae

Thanks to the reviewer that suggested another chapter centering on Rae, it gave me the idea for this chapter: thanks!

I own Rae

Keep in mind that Rae doesn't know Yusuke came back to life.

OoOoOoOo

She boarded the plane headed to Bordeaux, France just twenty three days after her high school graduation. In those last days she had basically fallen to pieces; in fact her grandfather, her only relative left, had the gall to put her into psychiatric "treatment"- to send her to a therapist. A week after that kid died, her grandfather told her she needed a break; that she had a lot of stress on her mind and he thought she needed to rest her frayed psyche. HA! That old bat didn't know what crazy was! No, she wasn't crazy. In fact, she was _angry_. Angry she couldn't save Yusuke Urameshi, age 14; yeah, she knew his name. Angry that he had _given up _so easily, that he didn't _fight back _as hard as he could. Angry at those people that just stood around and did nothing to help him, and angry at herself for not trying hard enough.

So yea, you could say she felt guilty. In fact, the guilt was _overwhelming_. It took over her mind, her dreams, her movements, everything, until it consumed her. When she closed her eyes she could see the life draining from Yusuke Urameshi; whatever she touched felt like his dying heartbeats; he was even the subject of her dreams.

"I bet the moron that hit him didn't even get a year in jail." She muttered to herself.

In a way she thought of herself as a coward. She couldn't stand to stay in Japan after what had happened; she knew that if she did she would spend the rest of her days wondering what he would have looked like, where he would've gone, what he might've been doing; she wouldn't have been able to live with those thoughts. The only way she got through the nightmares at first was to keep him nameless, but that stopped working when she attended his wake and sat in the back pew; listening to those who had known him mourn and cry over him. His mother was the worst of it all; she wouldn't even look up at those expressing their condolences, she just sat there and sobbed. Rae couldn't bring herself to go up to her, she just listened instead. She learned a lot about the kid she had push her own breath into. She heard stories of him being the biggest punk in his school, that everyone was afraid of him, that he was just some bully that enjoyed tormenting his classmates and teachers.

Those people must not have known him any better; cripes, he died saving a kid for crying out loud! The two that really grated on her last nerve were couple of teachers of his (the lady next to her pointed them out), the way they talked about him at his own wake was appalling! It was like Yusuke was a bug they had stepped on; Rae had almost gone over to them and beat some manners into them, but another man had beaten her to it (although he had done the beating verbally). That had been another of his teachers, she supposed, and she was grateful he had stepped in like that. The dead didn't deserve to be talked down upon.

Rae accepted her drink from the stewardess, thinking back to the day after the kid's wake. She hated that day with a passion. It was her first of several trips to the therapist. She went through the whole routine of the inkblots, the laying on the couch, talking about her feelings, the whole spiel. Of course she didn't learn anything she didn't already know. No, the learning began with the last therapist she ever went to, Dr. J. Alexandria. Her grandfather had flown her in from Canada just for Rae to talk to (mostly because he was tired of all the crazy). Dr. J had asked her immediately about Yusuke Urameshi and the accident. She wanted to know what Rae knew about him as a person; all Rae could give her was what she remembered about the accident and his obituary she had clipped from the news paper. Rae also told her about his wake and her nightmares about him, about the rage she felt towards herself for failing him.

She told the doctor about a boy that had showed up at the wake, one of Yusuke's friends, who had showed up yelling at the kid about how he hadn't beaten him in a fight yet. She told the doctor everything; even the things that she hadn't told any of the other therapists. The doctor just took steady notes and asked questions and when Rae was done telling she just look up from her note pad and said ;

"Well, I think you'll be relieved of the fact that everything that you've been experiencing is completely one hundred percent normal." What did she just say? Normal?

"People that have been through what you've been through sometimes develop strange bonds with victims in a traumatic accident. Especially if those people were trying to save the victim and the victim died. They feel like it's their fault that this person died and it starts to drag down that person like a weight is tied to their feet. They see the victim's face and hear their voice; it's a very unique situation, indeed. In your case, you had the added stress of graduation and final tests adding onto that guilt and pressure; making it worse." Rae heaved a sigh of frustrated relief at those words; small tears made rivulets down her cheeks. She knew she wasn't crazy, but no one believed her.

"Does this mean I don't have to take the anti depressants anymore?" Her grandfather had forced her to take them ever since the second therapist prescribed them to her.

"No, I have a different prescription for you." Oh God, not more pills.

"I want you to go abroad, anyplace in the world, and I want you to stay away from here for at least a year." A vacation? Awesome, at least she won't have to take pills the size of suppositories for Rhinos.

"Alright, I think my mom's family is still out in France somewhere." Rae hadn't spoken to either of her parent's families since they died.

So that is how she ended up on a plane heading to France. On a journey to help herself get over the guilt and rage; also to get over the cruel fact that Yusuke died, and she was totally fine with that. Though, she didn't try to completely forget him. His obituary was taped to the inside her suitcase, it was laminated of course; the original had ripped from all the folding and she had laminated the new one in a panic.

So if you asked Rae if she was crazy, she would hit you and say no, she never was. If you asked her if she had had to see more therapists, she would smile and say no. If you asked her if her nightmares had gotten any better, she would say yes and she had slept the entire night when she got to France for the first time in almost a year.

If you asked her if she had ever gotten over Yusuke's death, she would say no, she never would.

And she was fine with that.

OoOoOo

Night: I plan on a sequel to be added onto the end of this as a third chapter. Review and all that jazz, thanks!


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